Tablets—not DVRs or Game Consoles—Will Be at Heart of Streaming TV Boxes, TDG Analyst Says
New consumer products like the Apple TV box and Amazon's $50 Fire tablet and its updated Fire TV point to a TV future with tablets rather than DVRs or videogame consoles being the foundation of living room streaming, The Diffusion…
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Group analyst Joel Espelien said in a blog Tuesday. Apple TV and the iPad Air 2 share the same A8 processor, while Fire TV's MediaTek MT8173 processor is similar to the MediaTek 8135 behind the new Fire HD tablets, TDG said. That means Apple and Amazon streaming boxes will be on the same annual upgrade cycle as their tablets -- something "unheard of in living room devices," TDG said. It also creates a challenge for Microsoft as it now needs to consider putting out a $99 Surface-based Windows 10 streaming box "to get away from the long product cycles endemic to video console design," TDG said. The new consumer products also indicate that voice search is increasingly a staple of the mobile phone and tablet space operating systems. "Consumers are steadily evolving toward a new paradigm of video consumption based on app stores, device home screens (that show multiple apps), app home screens (that show featured content) and anchored by robust voice search," TDG said, adding that the traditional electronic program guide "is history." Amazon's plan to support 4K streaming video in Fire TV illustrates the likelihood that streaming, not broadcast, will be the driver of 4K adoption, TDG said. The Apple TV hardware platform almost surely will support 4K by next fall, TDG said.